China–Pakistan Economic Corridor: Macro Environmental Factors and Security Challenges

Abstract

Pakistan, excepting external issues, has been enduring from chronic problems, that is, political-military anarchy, bad-governance, interprovincial conflicts, social divisions, sectarian influence, and terrorism resulting negatively on inland politics, economics, socioculture, and techno-industry (PEST). This amplified domestic instability and governmental dependency toward external support. Appropriately, China’s recent FDI for CPEC is aimed to revive Pakistan’s energy, transport, infrastructure, industries and also procure China’s energy and trade transmission, and opportunities. So far, some studies separately have reported favorable and unfavorable effects emerged between projects and local PEST domains. Apart from numerous advantages, the drawbacks are also found many that are not limited to institutional concerns, project misappropriations, ethnic and provincial reservations, opposition, and targeted terrorism. Therefore, current study systematically revolves around exploring, comparing, and analyzing the cross-impact among CPEC, PEST, and Security concomitantly. Employing qualitative interviews, all-round literature, and statistical index datasets, study determines that the security risk is critical for Chinese manpower whereas the concerns of inter-government, projects, institutions, civil-military, and ethnicities are somehow manageable. Results show positive trend in Pakistan’s many PEST indicators except political violence, corruption, security costs and threats, electricity costs and supply, debts, imports, and forestry that are in continuous negative impact. Moreover, opposition, trust-deficit, and attacks against CPEC are yet unchanged factors. The study, therefore, argues that if negative impact factors are recognized for elimination, the CPEC as a result will improve the both host and investor environments with promised socioeconomic advantages, and minimize challenges including terrorism. In last, study also suggests various practical and policy implications.